Opinions and musings on religion, philosophy, science, politics, and life from a conservative Catholic neurosurgeon.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Pulpit Freedom Sunday

All around the country today, pastors are speaking out on politics from the pulpit. Many will videotape their sermons, and mail them to the IRS.

Since passage of the Johnson Amendment in 1954, the IRS has banned political advocacy by tax-exempt non-profit organizations, including churches. This law has obviously been ignored flagrantly by the left. The law has been a real hinderance to conservative Christians-- i.e. Christians who obey the law-- who have tried to exercise their rights in our democracy.

The Johnson Amendment is obviously unconstitutional. The government has no authority to ban political speech from churches, using the threat of taxation. The law will not survive judicial review.

There are several thousand lawyers who have agreed to represent the churches, and the hope is to get this to court and get this unconstitutional law dumped.

We need the voices of all our Christian citizens participating fully in our democracy.

No, this is a voluntary status: if a church wants to speak on political matters, then they pay taxes like everyone else. But churches who voluntarily choose to seek and obtain non-profit (and thus tax free) status are expected to abide by those rules. There is no right to a tax free status.

No one made these churches choose to operate as non-profit organizations. They made that decision of their own choice.

Yes, it's voluntary. They can choose to maintain the full measure of their constitutional rights. They'll just be taxed for it. Hey, if you'd like to have rights, you have to pay us. If you don't, no charge.

That's called a speech tax. A voluntary speech tax, but a speech tax no less.

How do you feel about poll taxes? Isn't being a voter a voluntary status? Hey, if you'd like to vote, you can pay us. Non-voting is still free. Your choice.

So what if everyone else pays taxes? Everyone else isn't required to keep their mouth shut.

This law, besides being unconstitutional, also serves no purpose whatsoever other than to protect politicians' backsides. They don't want heat from the pulpit so they came up with this scheme.

Anon, you're a little fascist. I hope no one ever allows you anywhere near a bench or a gavel.

"The Christian idea of the world is that it originated in a very complicated process of evolution but that it nevertheless still comes in its depths from the Logos. It thus bears reason in itself."

Benedict XVI

"The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason; it comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love"

Benedict XVI

"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God."

Benedict XVI

"Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding."

Plato

"Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors"

Isaac Newton

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."Albert Einstein

"Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance" Burt Humburg

"Egnor [is] an interesting example of the religious pathology that's going to be afflicting us for probably the next century..." P.Z. Myers

"...so far Dr.Egnor seems not to grasp the folly of his situation." Steven Novella

"Michael Egnor is giving every sign of continuing the shenanigans that has already made him infamous in skeptical circles." Steven Novella

"Dr. Egnor has his own blog now. Hilarity ensues..."Orac

"Egnor probably always was an arrogant asshole, also when he was an athiest. Then he had a midlife crisis, found religion and he became an even bigger asshole."

Troy

"...it is simply impossible for me to continue to believe that the "Michael Egnor" articles are being written by a real person who really believes what he (or she) writes." Mike Dunford

"Michael Egnor comes back for another helping of whup ass..." P.Z. Myers

"Dr. Egnor's deviously clever plan to destroy Darwinism once and for all..." Orac

"Dr. Egnor regularly laid down flaming swaths of stupid ..." Orac

"...Dr. Egnor reaches a new low..." Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"Egnor's machine is uninhabited by any ghost..." P.Z. MyersSuddenly [Egnor] knows law better than lawyers, he knows biology better than biologists, he pretends to know everything better than people who have actually studied whatever it is that Egnor feels threatens his crazy religion. Troy

"This is not an excuse for Dr. Egnor's ignorance – he threw his hat into the ring, he deserves what he gets. He should have had the proper humility to stay out..."Steven Novella

"...that paragon of arrogant ignorance, Dr. Michael Egnor, is back at it again..." Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"...Michael Egnor just can't get enough of making himself look like an idiot..." Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"Dr. Michael Egnor: Neurosurgeon, Stony Brook Faculty, and all around Dishonest Twit...based on the level of intellectual integrity that he just demonstrated, he's not someone I would trust to train a dog, much less a doctor" Mike Dunford

"Two Things that Don't Go Together: Michael Egnor and Intellectual Integrity...Someone once pointed out that when a dog pisses on a fire hydrant, it's not committing an act of vandalism. It's just being a dog..." Mike Dunford